DC hasn’t had a great track record as of late with its movies, apart from ‘Wonder Woman’; so there was some worry about how this film was going to perform. It may only have been out a couple of days but already vast numbers have been to see it and have given their opinions – most of which seem to have been negative. With so many reviews out there this isn’t going to be one of my essays. There’s a lot I could say about the film but it’s nothing that that everyone else isn’t saying about it.
The story is set not long after the events of ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’. To keep things as simple as possible, there are three boxes which when brought together become very powerful. A monstrous creature called Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds, ‘Munich’) wants the boxes so that he can unleash Hell on Earth – or something like that. Knowing that he’ll need help to stop Steppenwolf, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck, ‘Gone Girl’) assembles a group of other ‘heroes’, collectively referred to as the Justice League.
I was never a fan of Affleck as Batman. I didn’t like him last time out, and I still didn’t like him in this. It’s just poor casting, plain and simple. If rumours are to be believed Jake Gyllenhaal could take over the role in ‘Planet of the Apes’ director Matt Reeves’ ‘The Batman’. Combining his dark performance in ‘Nightcrawler’ and the shape he was in for ‘Southpaw’ I can see this working.
Diana Prince (Gal Gadot, ‘Wonder Woman’) is featured heavily in this movie, which should be no surprise given the success of her solo movie. She probably the best of the group in this film, but nowhere near as good as in her own.
A character that could have done with his own origin movie first is Arthur Curry/Aquaman (Jason Momoa, ‘Game of Thrones’). He was fine, but seemed to be used mostly as just eye-candy for the ladies.
Ezra Miller (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) was pretty good as Barry Allen/The Flash. Again, little back story. He had the most comical role which was a nice change to see in a DC film. That said, it was difficult for me not to compare him to Evan Peters’ Quicksilver from the X-Men films; and I have to say I preferred Quicksilver.
The final member of the group was Victor Stone/Cyborg (Ray Fisher, ‘Batman v Superman’). He was given a brief back story but not enough for me to know or care about the character.
Those are the main characters. As for the film itself; I don’t want to rip it to shreds like some people have, but there were certainly a lot of problems. The dialogue was terrible – it was a really poor script. The jokes were not funny and felt forced. The majority of the film seemed to be a CGI mess. One of the earlier action sequences on Themyscira (island of the Amazons) was really good, but the others weren’t great. The score was incredibly lazy and sounded like it was taken from a soppy Hallmark movie.
As for the positives, I thought the villain Steppenwolf looked cool. I quite liked his minions which looked like evolved metallic versions of The Wicked Witch of the West’s winged monkeys from ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I also enjoyed both of the post-credit scenes - one which was funnier than anything in the main film; and the other sets up a storyline that already looks much more interesting than this one.
Due to all the negative reviews I went in with hope more than expectation. I don’t think it’s quite as bad as some people have claimed, but it was dull, poorly written and poorly directed. Disappoinment.
